


Millie's Story

by JustThe1ce



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:08:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24114784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustThe1ce/pseuds/JustThe1ce
Summary: The mother of John Winchester was mentioned once in an off-hand comment, only inserted to validate why Josie & Henry didn't hook-up. She wasn't around when the boys were growing up. Mary didn't know her. John never spoke of her. She didn't even have a name until 9 years into the show.I thought, who was she? Maybe she was just an unremarkable 1950's housewife. Maybe she was a secret badass. Maybe she was both.Here's the story of Millie Winchester.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	Millie's Story

I was born Camile Rose Laurent on June 16, 1934 in Normal, Illinois. They called me Millie. My mother Margaret was a Legacy. Or would have been, had she been born with a penis. But no, my Uncle Larry was the one who got the honor of joining the secret society charged with protecting the world from the supernatural.

Young Larry was a good kid and he loved his family. He didn't think it was right that Margaret couldn't join the society. She was quicker than he was and was always the one who organized the best games and adventures for their siblings and cousins to play. Before he was raised as a full Man of Letters, he secretly taught her what they were teaching him. And she taught me.

The Men of Letters were very much unaware of this and we did everything we could to keep it that way! MoLs are jealous and petty creatures, always looking down on the common folk with pompous superiority. I don't know what they would have done to us for stealing their precious knowledge, but we didn't want to find out.

This became a lot more difficult when they made me marry Henry Winchester. I liked Henry. He was a good man. Full of idealistic zeal, but it came from a place of altruism. I did not love him. My mother was very ill and my father was desperate for help from any side. He didn't know anything about the MoLs and their patrimonial conventions. I was just 18 years old and society deemed that I was now fully ripe to be traded from my father's household to a husband's. Money was tight due to my mother's medical needs and my Grandpa Ganem easily convinced my father that the best way to alleviate the pressure would be to lose a daughter to gain a son. A son from a well-off family with a good job. A son who just happened to be a Men of Letters Legacy. Uncle Larry was fond of me, but also knew there was no stopping my arranged marriage. After all, _he_ had been told to find a wife from the daughters of the order and that had worked out well for him. He knew the Winchesters and knew that Henry was good and decent. As he explained to me in a rushed whisper at my surprise engagement dinner, he fought the elders to choose me for Henry's wife.

Henry, bless him, thought that I knew about the arrangement and that I had asked for him specifically. We'd met a few times at picnics and dinner parties, but had barely spoken more than pleasantries. I think we might have shared a dance once at my friend Joan's wedding, but I honestly didn't remember.

It was a Thursday afternoon and I had just quietly stepped out of my mother's room after trying to get her to eat a bit of soup for lunch. My father came up to me, took the lunch tray from my hands and said "Go dress your hair and put on your good Easter frock, _chérie_. We're going to the Winchester's for your engagement dinner."

Two weeks later I was a wife. Two years later I was a mother.

*****

I’d always wanted to have children. It was the one thing that made getting married seem like it would be okay. I was never boy-crazy. I never dreamed about my wedding or future husband, like the other girls I knew. I dreamed about my babies. Henry Winchester was as good as any other man to give me what I wanted and I willingly, if not enthusiastically, shared his bed. He knew I didn’t love him. He didn’t love me, either. But, we respected each other and worked together as friends to build a new life.

The first two months of our marriage, I was busy doing what I could to bring comfort to my mother. Uncle Larry would come by every few days and surreptitiously perform what spells he knew to try to heal her and ease her suffering. But still, the cancer took her. Three months later, my father took his own life. He’d found it difficult to return to normal life after the war and the atrocities he’d seen and been forced to commit. Watching my mother slowly fade away was too much for him. I was left to care for my younger siblings and my new husband.

My sister Marie was four years younger than I and absolutely focused on her ultimate goal of becoming a housewife. Magic and monsters and demons were not for her. My mother never bothered to tell her anything about the supernatural, because she knew it would be a waste of effort. My brother Charles was only just about to turn twelve when _maman_ died. Had she not gotten sick, she would’ve begun his training that year. Overwhelmed with grief and a new household to care for, I chose to keep him as ignorant of the Men of Letters as Marie.

After my third miscarriage, I began searching for a valid fertility spell that would guarantee I could carry a baby to term. The sorcery of the Men of Letters failed me and I turned to witchcraft. There’s not much difference between sorcery and witchcraft when you come right down to it. It’s mostly a matter of how you approach the magic. And a heavy dose of misogyny. I wasn’t inclined to follow the mandates of a bunch of manipulative ceremonial blowhards over the admittedly often terrifying power-mad crones who could give me a child. So, while my husband was at work and my siblings were at school, I studied grimoires I had stolen from my grandfather’s library.

Of course, those spell books were very tame and only contained low-level white magic. Just herbs and candles and well-wishes. The real magic was kept locked up deep in the Men of Letters chapter house. I knew where it was, by the simple expedient of following Henry one night shortly after he began his formal training. He didn’t know that I knew about any of it. He thought I was just like his mother and older sisters: blissfully unaware of the Men of Letters and their noble duty to protect the rest of us from all that goes bump in the night. He told me that he’d joined a gentlemen's club where they met to share philosophical musings and play cards. Occasionally they’d perform charitable community works.

I devised a complex plan to break into the chapter house under a cloaking spell and steal away whatever grimoires I could find. It took me a few months to perfect the spell and in the meantime, it became apparent that the white magic had worked and I was solidly pregnant.

Desperate not to jeopardize the new life growing within me, I gave up magic until my son was safely born. Grandpa Ganem was thrilled I had given him another Legacy and Henry was over the moon at being a father. I finally had my baby.

John would be the only baby I could ever have. His birth was complicated and we both nearly died. They took my uterus to save my life. Once I recovered from the delivery, I threw myself back into witchcraft, studying any spells I could find to protect my new and only child.

*****

Grandpa Ganem suffered a stroke during a difficult banishment and was forced to retire from the MoLs. Henry’s spell training was passed on to new Master of Spells Cuthbert Sinclair. Cuthbert didn’t like Henry. Cuthbert didn’t like anyone really, except himself. He was ambitious, unscrupulous and terribly clever. He was also terribly good at magic. One of the reasons Uncle Larry had pushed so hard for me to be married to Henry was because Cuthbert was my other possibility. Cuthbert wanted me, or rather my bloodline, and he did not like not getting what he wanted. Consequently, he took it out on poor Henry. His training took twice as long as it should have and was three times as hard. I think he was trying to make Henry quit. But, he didn’t. He just put his head down and toughed it out.

In 1956, Cuthbert Sinclair’s dangerous schemes went too far and killed two of his fellow members. He was exiled from the Men of Letters and disappeared. Henry’s training continued at an accelerated pace alongside his new fellow initiate, Josie Sands.

Josie Sands. The first female initiate in the American Men of Letters. It wasn’t her fault that my mother hadn’t been allowed to join. It wasn’t her fault that she was the only living progeny of the Preceptor and he changed the rules to allow her in the order. It wasn’t her fault that she was in love with my husband. It wasn’t her fault that he didn’t love her back. She was a good person and was kind to me the few times I met her. She didn’t deserve what happened to her. I had no reason to hate her. But, I did.

Josie had proper training, a safe place to practice and access to vast amounts of knowledge. But, she had to follow their rules. The only rule I had to follow was secrecy. I had no masters. I had no coven. I had no consistent access to new spells either, unfortunately. But, I had my magic and my son. And I became very good at the spells I could find.

*****

August 12, 1958 Henry and Josie were set to be raised to full members of the order. A few days before, while on an intelligence mission with Henry, Josie was possessed by the Knight of Hell Abbadon. Abbadon used the knowledge she gained from Josie to slaughter the brotherhood and effectively end the Men of Letters in America. Uncle Larry survived, but was gravely wounded. Henry disappeared.

I scoured the ruined chapter house for any signs of him or his body. I collected all of the books and artifacts I could safely remove and spelled the rest invisible and undetectable by normal people. I performed every location spell I could find. Each one came up blank.

That night my husband put his son to bed, kissed me goodbye and we never saw him again.

Uncle Larry healed from his wounds, but remained blind. I saw my sister well married to a local carpenter and my brother safely off to college in Chicago. Both were warded for protection, of course. John and I moved to Lebanon, Kansas with Uncle Larry. The Men of Letters’ main stronghold was located in Lebanon and my uncle felt it was his duty to keep it safe, no matter that even he didn’t have a key or any other way into the place. He wanted to maintain the wards and protective spells that kept it hidden. I wanted to learn those spells. We had no more reason to stay in Illinois, so we went with him.

I got a job as a receptionist at a car repair shop while John went to school during the day and studied magic with Uncle Larry at night while John slept. My cousins, Larry’s two boys, were both dead, the oldest in a plane over Germany and the youngest at the hands of Abbadon. Uncle Larry had no one else to share the knowledge with and it was his duty to pass it on, so he willingly passed it to me. One of the first spells he taught me was a very sophisticated and subtle warding that made us unremarkable and forgettable. We knew what was out there. A flashy wall of magic would draw supernatural attention straight to us and Abbadon would learn of Larry’s survival and the location of the bunker. We had to be very quiet and very careful. Unfortunately, the spell also made us very alone. We gained no friends in town. John had no playmates from school.

He was miserable. His father had abandoned him and he had no friends. I felt terrible for my little boy and doted on him to try to make up for what I couldn’t change to keep him safe. His emotional pain made him volatile and unpredictable. Uncle Larry and I regretfully concluded that John was unsuited to the discipline of magic. We never told him of the supernatural or the inheritance of his father’s legacy.

Not wanting to draw attention for being a young single mother without a husband, I decided that I needed to find an innocuous man for myself that could serve as a father figure for John. Eddie was a mechanic at the garage who I deduced had no interest in women. I relaxed my warding and became his friend. He was kind and funny and I enjoyed spending time with him. I convinced him to marry me. He would let me be. I would let him be with his lover, Jim. We would both cover for each other and avoid the talk of the town.

When John was ten, Jim got a new job and moved to Lawrence. So, we moved, too. I had learned pretty much all I could learn from Uncle Larry at that point and John was utterly wretched living in a town where no one would give him more than a passing glance. The move was very good for us for a time. I eased our wardings a bit, since we were no longer living in the shadow of the bunker and Uncle Larry. My name had changed to Millie Carson and I told myself since I was female, no one who knew who I really was would think that I knew anything about the Men of Letters. I couldn’t bring myself to make John change his last name. He thought his father had taken our lives away, I wasn’t going to take away his identity, too. He was still a Winchester.

John made a few casual friends. Eddie taught him about cars and how to fix them. He joined the little league team. He seemed to finally be happy. Then puberty struck with a savage blow. The changes in his hormones released latent magical talent that exploded in fits of rage. I had no choice. I had to lock it down. He was going to bring everything crashing down on us. Taking away his magic was the only way to keep him safe. He became sullen and angry. He drove away his few friends and developed a resentment for me that I knew was valid, even if he didn’t. Eddie and Jim chalked it up to teenage angst and laughed it off, saying that every boy goes through it and he’d grow out of it. But, he didn’t.

The day before his 18th birthday, John’s magic broke through its containment wards. We were having a stupid argument about him leaving dirty laundry on the bathroom floor and it snapped. I will be eternally grateful that Eddie was out with Jim and wasn’t there to hurt by the fire storm that ripped through our cottage. I barely raised my own defensive wards in time. The power it took for me to shut it all down was too strong. I broke my baby’s magic. I will never forgive myself.

If we had allowed him to train and learn to use his power as it grew along with his body, things would have been different. He might have become a great sorcerer like his grandfather. Or he might have become the next Cuthbert Sinclair, dangerous and terrible. I thought I’d put his magic in a box that would hold it until and if we were ready to release it, but what I really did was create a dam that forced his magic to build up and up until that day when it overflowed and flooded out, destroying everything in its path.

It took everything I had to stop his magic, erase his memory and reverse the destruction before someone noticed. It took a lot of obvious magic. Lawrence, Kansas shone like a beacon that day. There was no way that we hadn’t caught someone’s attention. Our days of peaceful normality were numbered.

At his birthday dinner, John’s hurt and resentment came to a boil.

“I’m enlisting in the Marines. I’m leaving tomorrow and I never want to see you again!” And he never did.

*****

It says a lot that I felt he was safer in the middle of an endless war in the jungle on the other side of the world than there in Kansas with me. About an hour after John’s bus left Lawrence for Parris Island, the first witch came to my door.

It was a brief and vicious fight and one that I couldn’t lose. Somehow I didn’t. I killed that witch. But, I couldn’t stop the one that caught me outside of Des Moines. She took me to the Grand Coven to stand trial. I had killed High Priestess Olivette’s favorite minion. Then she found out I was trained by the Men of Letters. The same Men of Letters who had decimated witchcraft over the centuries of her rule through persecution and theft of precious spell books and artifacts. I was sentenced to eternity in a pyxis crystal.

And so I remained, trapped in stasis in a jewel on Olivette’s mantle, until the day the Scottish witch Rowena turned the High Priestess into a hamster. The pyxis spell required regular renewal and when Olivette didn’t return to perform the maintenance sequence, I was released.

Time had not passed for me. I still felt the abject terror of the instant the spell was laid on me. Forty-three years had gone by, yet I was still a fit 38 years old. Once I regained full brain and body function, I got myself out of there! The rest of the Grand Coven was too busy fighting for the newly open leadership position to think to look for me and I was easily able to escape. Which was lucky, since I was in no state to be attempting magic.

I needed to find a good place to hide that had no ties to the Grand Coven and there was no way I could go home to Kansas. I chose Haiti. The Houngan priests hate the Grand Coven and, thanks to my father, I knew enough conversational French to get by.

My son returned from Vietnam to find that I had abandoned him, just like his father had when he was four. He never learned the truth about either of us and hated us both for the rest of his life. The protections I had smothered him in were broken when I went into the crystal. John was finally able to be normal. Eddie helped him get a good job at a garage. He met a pretty girl. They got married and had a family of their own. For a brief time, John was almost happy.

I’ve picked up quite a bit of Vodou soul magic in the four years I’ve been in hiding here. I go by Cami Rose now. I’ve cried a little each day for John, Henry, Uncle Larry and even poor Josie Sands. Eddie and Jim were finally able to get married to each other; I cry tears of joy for them. I chose not to contact my grandsons. They seem to have things well in hand and don’t need the complication of a half-trained sorcerer-witch fugitive grandma showing up at their doorstep.

Until now.

Sam Winchester just fell out of my closet.

“Where’s my brother!?”


End file.
